Writer’s Block

Happy new year, everyone! I’m pushing ahead with my novel, but in the meantime, wanted to share my six word challenge results from M.J.’s (@pageflutter on Instagram) “Six Word Challenge.” A six word challenge encourage you to spend 5 – 30 minutes a day coming up with a six word story based on a prompt.

It’s no secret that I’ve been stuck on writing this book for a couple of months, because I feel like I wrote myself into a corner. I’ve been scratching my head while struggling to figure out what went wrong. Here are three methods I found by scouring the internet in my desperation for ways to beat writer’s block.

I got into this problem by asking “what should come next?” I had thought at some point in the story, my characters might get engaged, or develop feelings for each other. Because I hadn’t thought through the path to get there, I was just stuck on the idea of “yeah they get together.” So, I jumped the gun and forced an engagement on they way too soon in the story.

Here are the methods I used to work through a writer’s block and giving myself options again.

1. Ask “What could go wrong?” not “What should come next?”

This is great because it shifts your perspective and motivation, not from telling a series of events, but putting your character into situations they have to solve / fix / escape / etc. Take a step back by answering the following questions:

What actions/decisions just occurred?

What could go wrong because of those actions/decisions?

What’s the worst thing that could go wrong of the list of things that could go wrong? <– Write that one

Materials

This is best done on pen and paper, or maybe sticky notes, so you don’t get attached to ideas. The point is to come up with terrible things that come out of actions and decisions taken by your characters, and whichever one is worst, or which moves the story forward, pick that one.

Opinion

I like this method because it forced me to stop thinking “how do I get to the next chapter” and instead focus on “what just happened? how does that affect things?” It makes the story feel logical, but at the same time, forced me to brainstorm in a way I’m not used to. Great exercise, and now I have a list of things I could use later in the book.

2. Build Your Plot as Cause-Effect

I’m a pantser trying to be a plotter, and let me tell you, it’s a tough transition. Rather than using a typical outline like you’re used to seeing in school, follow this structure, which I’m borrowing from Janice Hardy (seriously, her blog archives are a treasure trove):

Goal/action BUT conflict/constraint AND SO action/decision

Materials

Again, this is best done in paper so you can scribble and scratch things out, but you could also do this on your computer/tablet if you want to.

Opinion

I began writing in a table format, one column for Goal/Action/Decision and one for Conflict/Constraint, but that just felt weird to me. Writing this in a sentence format was super helpful for me, though.

3. Research Your Way Out

Historical fiction writers get to use this more than other genres, I think, but it’s useful. If you’re not sure where to go, research what was happening that day in your town, or the attitudes of the era, medical procedures, etc. I’m using online scans of local newspapers from the era to know what’s happening in the world around them. This world is affecting my characters, and it’s important I know when to bring that information into the story. Similarly, since one of my characters is sick, we’ll need to see a doctor or some medically-inclined person, so I had to research whether such a person existed in the town at that time, and what sort of knowledge they’d have. This will help me raise the stakes… what is the character sick with? How will the doctor respond? Will the character infect others? What does that do to their personal goals?

Materials

The internet, books, historical societies, online repositories, etc.

Opinion

I tend to turn to research when I’m stuck, but in this case, it didn’t help me because I’d written myself in a corner. The result of using these three techniques are that I’m rewriting parts of chapters seven and eight so that I’m set up properly for chapter nine.

What techniques have you read about that have helped you get rid of writer’s block?

Fighting to stay accountable to your writing can be difficult, as any one can tell you. How many of us writers hear from friends and family, “Oh, I have this story in my head that’s going to be the next great novel” or something similar? How many times have we said that to ourselves?

If you haven’t heard about Don’t Break the Chain, it’s an initiative to stay accountable to your goals by marking off each day you completed. The intent, of course, is to not break the chain of days you made progress. Now, I had three different goals this year, and I printed out calendar templates for each one…

X number of push-ups twice a week

X number of sit-ups twice a week

Write as often as possible

I lost the calendars for the first two goals after three months, not an auspicious start to the year. But my writing one… well, I switched over to the DIY writing calendar my friend Caitlin O’Sullivan gave me as part of a writer’s care package. It’s looking a little battered, but not super worse for the wear.

Pictured are the first six months of 2014, left to right, top to bottom (i.e. January is top left, Feburary is next, etc). The color legend is fairly simple… red scribbles mean I wrote that day (a paragraph counts), and blue scribbles are days I focused on research.

As you can tell, February and May were terrible months for me, but March and June were pretty fantastic!

Looking back, February was a stressful month because the swing dance team was ramping up for the first competition. I wasn’t dancing due to injuries and work overload, but I attended every practice to take video so team members knew what they needed to work on.

May was awful for writing because I was out of town every weekend, and exhausted during the week because of all the travel. So yes, I let life get in the way, but there has to be a balance!

Anyway, I’m loving this sort of luddite version of a writer’s quantified self. It’s helping me track my stress levels, too, which is funny. I’ve learned that during months where I don’t write often (meaning four or more days), I’m kind of a terrible person. Well, a terrible person to be around, anyway.

So thank you, Caitlin, for sending me this calendar. There’s something important about me scribbling a successful day, rather than checking off a digital calendar. I have two special pens I use to mark the days… it’s become something of a superstition for me.

Last night I wrote for the first time since September 2012. That’s eight months of no writing. I was afraid I was going to hit a year. What writing I did back in September felt like pulling teeth, and I gave up until the feeling to write would come back.

I had no idea it would take eight months. Eight months of worrying why I wasn’t writing. Eight months of reading writer’s block buster articles. Eight months of reading research books about the location I thought I wanted to write about. Eight months of voicing frustrations to The Boy that I had lost my muse. Eight months of slight depression.

I tried to continue blogging, thinking writing non-fiction was better than not writing at all. But as you can tell by my pathetic archive, that only lasted a couple more months.

Last night I took the advice of a commenter and watched Shakespeare in Love for the first time. I was watching The Boy’s dogs while he met with his dance partner, having just gorged myself on homemade Chinese hot pot. The movie ended. I stared at my writing journal on my abandoned desk, which I had moved to my living room in the desperate attempt to remind myself to write.

That bright green cover with the bright blue ribbon filled with lined, unwritten pages no longer seemed so scary. I grabbed a pen and put it to paper. I wrote three pages, enough to be a decent first draft of a first chapter.

Every once in a while, I get into a major writing slump. I despair of ever putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard for my fiction because I am convinced I am the most unfortunate waste of authorial intent ever. EVER. This feeling can last anywhere from a day, to a couple of weeks, to an entire dreaded season. Sometimes, when the sun shines on a Sunday morning I wake up and remember I have a cure for this writerly depression.

Movies. And not just any movies. Movies about writing and writers. I have three favorite movies that I watch in succession that never fail to make me feel better. No, not just better, but excited to write. Excited about life and recording it in fiction, exploring the emotions and thoughts of these people who speak to me in my dreams and daydreams.

Stranger than Fiction

Because every writer has some sort of mania about their characters. I often dream about mine, and the idea that they can actually come to life, that they are walking around separate from me in time and space and physical-ness is just fun and inspiring.

Alex and Emma

Because it’s nice to have the reminder that you know what? Sometimes your readers don’t like your original idea, or character description, or ending. Take a moment, step back, find a good beta reader, and make changes.

You’ve Got Mail

Because the soundtrack is amazing, the characters are cute, there is witty dialogue, and when the movie is over you want to be typing with emphasis at your computer as if you were writing to the person with which you are falling in love.

And as a bonus, sometimes I like to throw Music and Lyrics in there too. Because it’s goofy, it emphasizes the importance of having outside influence on your creative inception, and Drew Barrymore is adorable.

After I graduated with my masters in 2010, I was dead-set on having my second book published within the year, which I did.

It took me seven years to write Haunting Miss Trentwood (because I was a full-time student and a part-time writer). I put my hand and head to marketing, and did so for a year… so much time spent interacting on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, etc, meant I wasn’t reading or writing anymore. Just talking about things that I had read and written before Haunting Miss Trentwood was published.

It was draining. Exhausting. It made me despise writing, the thinking and doing of it.

I have felt so guilty lately for not wanting to touch The Rebel’s Touch. I keep printing drafts hoping I will feel that old familiar rush that motivated me to put the Red Pen of Doom to paper. Nothing doing. Instead, I find myself staring out the window, wishing my head didn’t hurt. Or hoping a certain someone calls so we can hang out. Or looking up new recipes because I don’t want to be sitting, I want to be moving around and making something new. Or throwing my dance shoes into my bag because I have a performance or a lesson to teach or a party to enjoy.

Fact is, I have a very particular sort of Writer’s Block: life.

I never had a life before. It’s amazing! In high school, college, and even graduate school, my schedule consisted of…

School,

Homework, and then,

Because I wasn’t allowed to hang out with anyone after dark (in high school anyway which set my pattern for undergrad and grad school), I would read or write or paint or sew.

I love those years, they made me prepared and capable to handle the little fixes around the house.

But the truth of the matter is I have no idea how to balance a full life and my writing.

The first three months of 2012, I tormented myself by thinking I wasn’t being true to my craft. I didn’t want to admit that my “craft,” as it were, was switching. I’m a swing, lindy hop, and balboa dancer. I won’t have this “young” almost-27-year-old body forever. This is my opportunity to make the best of my youth and dance while I can. Writing… well, I hope with all my soul that I will always have my mind available to write one more story.

I’ve also begun exploring religion, something that has always been a part of my life, but never explicitly. I just have so much I’m trying to figure out right now… My psyche is in flux, making it difficult to write about characters whose lives are also in flux. Without knowing myself and what I want to write about, it is almost impossible for me to give my characters minds and thoughts and worries of their own.

Do you have any suggestions for me, to help me balance life and writing?

As of writing this post, I’m 17k words into The Rebel’s Hero, which is about 24% toward my word count goal. Without fail, when I get to this percentage mark, I get cold feet. I don’t know why. It’s very frustrating. I start to doubt my ability to write, to craft characters, to weave details, to drive the plot forward. I think this is because the beginning is complete. Now the meat of the story takes over, the plot thickens, and more questions are thrown to the reader.

I’m standing in place, deer in the headlights, frightened by this monstrous train called The Rebel’s Hero steaming full blast down the tracks because even though I’ve set up a good story with a multitude of questions I need to answer throughout the plot…

I still don’t know what The Question is. What am I trying to answer with this work? What is my big question that I’m struggling to explore and engage?

Peeking over shoulders

Do other authors do this? I feel like they do. I think MJ Rose explores the question of “what if the paranormal were real?” Her form of paranormal is more of the mundane… reincarnation, hypnotism, etc. Her fiction is fascinating, deep, driven. Joan Reeves, highlighted at The Book Designer last week, asked the question “Why would a woman marry a man for money?” and was surprised when her book was labeled a romance.

Sometimes crafting fiction feels backwards. I know I write romances, sweet though they may be. But maybe I should stop worrying about the genre, since I already know that’s what I gravitate to. Instead, I should worry, what is my question?

Exploring the space

I write this blog to be transparent about the writing process. It isn’t easy, and sometimes, it isn’t fun. I look to my previous fiction to remind myself that I’ve done this before, and I can do it again. Catching the Rose asks the question “what would you do to find your first love?” Haunting Miss Trentwood asks “what do you do after your parents have died?” Mad Maxine, my short story, asks “what happens when you don’t let go?”

I’ve blogged about The Big Question before in terms of individual characters, but for the plot? Here is a list of questions The Rebel’s Hero could be about…

Apologies for going MIA for a bit. Work has been super stressful and winter was getting me down, but no matter. I regrouped over the weekend by working out for three hours (two consecutive, one where the trainer kicked my butt and I’m still hurting four days later).

On Monday at work I took charge on a project that people needed but no one had time to do except for me, because I’m in a holding period for my two projects. It was just the sort of creative project I needed to do at work to make me feel accomplished and useful, because I haven’t felt either lately.

Tuesday was a rush of decision-making, updating the creative project I did on Monday, etc. I tweeted about how work was making my brain hurt but I wanted to write… I haven’t written in a while and rather than feeling down or antsy about it, I was finally starting to feel like doing something about it.

I’m in the middle of organizing the extra papers and books in my home office, one of the last things I have to do in order to truly be moved into my apartment. Rather than continuing with that, I plopped on the floor in the middle of the mess and wrote for an hour.

Reader, I wrote over a thousand words in 44 minutes for the rewrite of Catching the Rose. Which, funny story, is selling better than Haunting Miss Trentwood on Barnes and Noble for reasons unknown. Hoping that the rewrite will make those sales even better.

Reviews for Catching the Rose and Haunting Miss Trentwood are positive, which I’m very happy about. And they aren’t just raving, glowing reviews which other readers sometimes doubt. All the reviews seem thoughtful. I couldn’t ask for more.

Or could I?

When I finish writing a new book, go through the edits, get it to production, I take a step back, admire my handiwork, and fall into a mini-depression.

The nice thing about books not actually being children is that no matter how old I am, whatever my financial or romantic situation, I can make another. A stronger, faster, better one. And I can have as many as I want.

At least, I could if I weren’t also paralyzed by the fact that people are enjoying my work. I want to write, but I am feeling frustrated that the characters haven’t introduced themselves to me yet. And now I have the added pressure of making sure the next book doesn’t suck worse than a sophomore slump. What would that be, anyway, since it would be my third book? A junior jumble?

But hey, I don’t want to whine about how I don’t know my next book. Because that’s not entirely true. I do know I’m going to write a book that uses the research I did for breach of promise that didn’t make it into Haunting Miss Trentwood, which is, oh, I don’t know, all of it.

I also want to release an anthology of short stories, but the problem is that short stories are difficult! I like setting, building up the relationship with the characters. Everything is condensed in a short story. I tend to write contemporary short stories, but I want to keep to my brand and write quirky historical fictions in the short story format.

For whatever reason, I’m feeling 1930s America, which brings up another problem: the last time I studied this era I was in 8th grade. Do I want to do enough research to convert my short stories to fit that era? Or should I use my existing research and write another Victorian historical novel?

I have no idea. Performance anxiety for the fail.

I think rather than dealing with it, I’ll pull an ostrich move and shove my head in the deep sands of a good book. Can you help me out? What are some excellent books you’ve picked up lately?

Best, Belinda

P.S. It’s Monday, which means you should visit the blog to check out the Monday “Meet an Author” blog hop in the sidebar of Worderella Writes.

I’m not going back on my word entirely as I do feel we need to be practicing our craft as often as we can. Taking my own experience as an example, however, I’ve found that this undue pressure we put on ourselves to write every day and come up with brilliant words every time we put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) is often what causes my dreaded “writer’s block.”

So what am I saying?

Maybe writers don’t need to write every day

Writing for writers is important. For me, it’s like breathing. Most times, I breathe normally, but sometimes I hyperventilate, and sometimes I feel like I’m being strangled. Those are the days when my writer’s block is the worst, and last night while I had trouble falling asleep I tried to figure this one out.

Is writer’s block really a block, or just frustration?

When I feel drained of words, I turn to reading. I pick up the nearest book and read at least a chapter. This seems to shift my metaphorical writing cup from half-empty to half-full. My imagination is sparked, and I begin asking my favorite question: What if?

The next thing I know, I’ve written a couple hundred words and hey, they aren’t even that bad.

So what am I saying? Maybe it isn’t important for writers to write every day. But it is important that writers do something related to writing every day. See the difference?

There is more to writing than the act of it

When I was learning violin in elementary school, it wasn’t enough to learn where to put my fingers on the fingerboard, or how to hold the bow, or how to read music. I needed to listen to existing musicians. I needed to watch their movements and mimic them until I became comfortable enough with the tools at hand to create my own movements. I mimicked until I was comfortable enough to create.

I am not saying to plagiarize. Good God I’m not saying that. I am saying that if you take time to read books, magazines, anything, to refill your cup (or bowl) of imagination, you are more likely to write because you won’t be burned out.

So on the days you feel like you can’t write, or don’t want to write, pick up a book and know you’re still making progress. Other things you can do that are related to writing include:

Read what you’ve written previously

Edit what you’ve written previously

Draw a mind map of your story

Draw a sketch of your main character

Make a collage relating to your book

Find music which inspires you to write

Make an exercise routine tailored to your main character, and then do the exercises

Buy your character’s favorite food from the grocery store and eat it

Take a note from Dory in Finding Nemo. What does she tell us? To just keep swimming.

What did we learn from Meet the Robinsons? Keep moving forward.

And finally, what have we learned about Belinda? She watches a lot of Disney movies.

I’ve been pondering my bad mood lately, trying to decipher my frowns and snarls as I stomp around the house, and the following comment by Libba Bray, author of A Great and Terrible Beauty, came to mind…

I’m one of those people who has to write. If I don’t write, I feel itchy and depressed and cranky. So everybody’s glad when I write and stop complaining already.

And so I must admit something that rather embarrasses me: I haven’t written a word for Haunting Miss Trentwood in over a week.

I know not to do this. I know my pattern. The longer I don’t write, the moodier and… well… bitchier I tend to become. I don’t know why I do this. I know I ought to be writing, but I wanted to get my micropress set up, and really ramp up my involvement in the writing community. In the meantime, I’ve let my writing slip, and therefore my optimism and overall good mood.

But now I’m afraid that I’ve lost my steam. I’ve felt guilty about neglecting 750words.com because I know the system will say it hasn’t seen me in a while, and it would be right. I’m most afraid that because I haven’t been writing (creatively), and my mood has suffered for it, that said bad mood will seep into my writing and make it worse for the wear.

“My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.”
– Anaïs Nin, French Writer

First, I need to say that last week the lovely Evangeline at Edwardian Promenade awarded the I Love This Blog to me, and I have to spread the love around. See the end of this post for the award, and my nominations. <3

This week’s exercise is to take a look around you. So often do we writers get lost in the act of writing, that we forget we are supposed to be writing about life. Who are these characters that we spend our every waking moments with? How can we possibly know who they are, and how to make them distinct, if all we do is sit around our houses dreaming about them?

NaNoWriMo is a difficult time for any writer, whether you have a plan/outline or not. I found that during the second week, I began to lag a little. Things weren’t coming as quickly, and I was losing some of my pep.

I knew I had to leave the computer. There was something about sitting in the same spot day in, day out, writing to fulfill the daily goal, that exhausted me. I took a digital camera and small writing journal, and went for a walk.

I took pictures of whatever I saw that inspired me, with the plan to print them out and tape them to the walls around my desktop. I sat by the little lake at the center of my campus, and absorbed. I never wrote anything.

Three years later (i.e. a couple of weeks ago), that moment crystallized into the following:

At Ohio State, my favorite place on campus was Mirror Lake. There are beautiful flowering trees there in the spring, and ducklings that swim in time with The Truman Show soundtrack on my mp3 player. In the winter, the lake freezes over and everyone tests their courage by walking across it. In the fall, the most zealous Buckeyes jump into the lake to show their loyalty against M*ch*gan. There are benches, and sometimes people play their guitars. I would walk around the lake, usually listening to classical music, and breathe it in. I’d stare at the fountain in the center, and how it sometimes made a rainbow on very bright days.

Simple, reminiscent, evocative. Do you have such a moment, and can you use it for your writing?

This month, I’m doing a series of short exercises, one a week, to help those of you who are stuck with your WIP. Maybe you’re doing NaNoWriMo, maybe not. In any case, it helps to have an exercise to spark your imagination.

This week’s exercise is a challenge in brevity. The goal of NaNoWriMo, for instance, is to write 50k words in a month. A 50k word work is about the length of a short novel, similar to an Avon or Harlequin romance. This can be a challenge in and of itself… how do you write a novel with developed characters and an interesting plot in 50k words? Some writers, who are cheating themselves, will litter their WIP with adverbs, adjectives, and unnecessary description just to make that word count goal.

Here is a popular and well-known writing exercise… Hemingway was once given a challenge to write an entire story in only six words. His answer:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Apparently, he thought it was his greatest literary work ever. It speaks to the audience, and pulls them in. We know the ending to the story, and can surmise how it began. Most importantly, we care.

Here are some of my six word stories:

He smiled, and her world ended.

She always hated writing the beginning.

Her lips were chapped. Damn frogs.

Required: knight in armor (shining optional).

There are many writers who practice this sort of flash fiction through their Twitter accounts, where each update can only be 140 characters long. Can you tell a story in a sentence? What is your six word story? Do you even count these micro-narratives as stories?

Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
– Arnold H. Glasow

A somewhat creepy quote just in time for Halloween, I think. Can you imagine what it must feel like, to set yourself on fire? Let’s think of it in the literal sense, first.

There are the branches and twigs, all dried to a satisfying crisp so they will catch flame. There are the ropes, to keep you in place as the flames grow higher and start to lick at your feet. There is the stake to which you bind yourself, and the gasoline in which you douse yourself. There is the doubtful assistant, who ties you up, and lights the flame for you. There are your shrieks, though of triumph or horror for completing the task, we’ll never know.

Gruesome. Happy Halloween.

Now let’s look at this as a giant metaphor, because who doesn’t like a good metaphor?

As a writer, you must set yourself on fire.

There are your ideas (branches and twigs), happily fermenting in the back of your mind and ready to explode on the page. There are your goals and aspirations (ropes), to keep you going as the going gets tough and the rejections evermore painful. There is the blog to which you commit yourself (the stake), and the people who comment (gasoline), holding you accountable. There is your critique partner (doubtful assistant), who asks you questions, and encourages you when you’re ready to give up. There are your shrieks, though of triumph or horror for completing the first draft and having to start the second, we’ll never know.

I encourage all of you to set yourself on fire. Be the passion that brings your work to life, and others will feel it in your writing. As sung in The Sound of Music, “Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever should.” What does that mean? It means that, like in the quote at the beginning of this entry, success won’t spontaneously combust for you. Success will be a result of an arduous process into which you pour your heart, soul, patience, and resources.

Set yourself on fire. Join NaNoWriMo, and feel the flames burn ever higher as you blaze toward the finish line. Good luck, and may the muse be with you.

Leave a comment about something you do to get fired up about writing. Do you listen to music? Do you watch a favorite movie or read a favorite book? Do you talk to people about your writing?

I choose my television and movie choices carefully (most of the time). If I listed my favorite tv series, a pattern of character-driven plots will emerge (Pushing Daisies, The Office, Gilmore Girls, 30 Rock, Arrested Development, Dead Like Me…). This makes sense because my fiction is character-driven. Maybe I should watch shows that are more about the plot, so I don’t have blindspots? In any case, today I’m writing about one show and one movie that inspire me, and I hope you’ll share yours!

Pushing Daisies is a delightful, narrated mystery show about a man named Ned who can bring the dead to life with the touch of his finger. There is a catch, however: a second touch will kill the person forever. And it turns out that if Ned lets the person stay alive for more than a minute after his special touch, someone else must die in their place. Things get juicy when he brings his childhood sweetheart back to life. If he lets her live, someone else must die in her place. If he touches her once, ever, she will be dead forever.

Would you believe me if I said this was a comedy? I love this show because of how clever the writers are with Ned and Chuck’s situation (Chuck is short for Charlotte). Thanks to the narrator, the mood is reminiscent of the most recent movie rendition of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Really, it’s like sitting down to story time every week. Look for it this fall, I bet you’ll like it.

Now in terms of movies, am I the only one who saw Penelope, that movie starring Christina Ricci? And loved it? This is a fairy tale about a girl cursed with a pig’s nose until she is loved and accepted by one of her own. This movie is straight-forward, and some claim it failed at teh fairy-tale attempt, but this is a movie of characters, each with a motive, each with something to learn. Everyone learns something in this movie (all the main and secondary characters, anyway). I found it charming and refreshing for the simple reason that the heroine is her own hero.

So here’s something I’ve always wondered about my fellow writers/readers. They always say writers should read a lot, a statement I heartily agree with. But what about other media outlets? Do you feel television and movies can inspire you, or does it blunt your creativity? Are there certain shows you watch precisely because it sparks your imagination? Tell all!

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